Don't you wish virus writers would discover girls and beer? Life would be better, for them and us. Unfortunately, they take out their adolescent urges in cyberspace, and the rest of us have to suffer.
Witness the "Sasser" worm making the rounds this week.
This nasty little bug slides into unprotected computers and proceeds to restart them over and over. No files eaten or drives trashed ... just irritation for irritation's sake.
As of mid-week, there were four variants of the worm and estimates of 500,000 to 1 million infected computers. Computer problems were reported at several companies, though few were willing to admit the glitches were Sasser-related (other companies would snicker, you see, and other degenerates would think them easy marks).
Want further evidence the Sasser bug was thought up by a kid in dire need of a spanking? There's a follow up e-mail professing to be a Sasser-fixer. Those dumb enough to believe this and open the attachment are hit with Netsky-AC -- the 28th variant of an e-mail worm that opens up your computer to hijacking.
In that NetSky worm is this charming little message:
"Hey, av firms, do you know that we have programmed the sasser virus?!?. Yeah thats true! Why do you have named it sasser? A Tip: Compare the FTP-Server code with the one from Skynet.V!!! LooL! We are the Skynet..."
A translation:
"Attention anti-virus companies ... we, the authors of this virus (NetSky-AC), are also the authors of Sasser. Honest. And we're curious: why do you call the virus 'Sasser'? Anyway, to prove the connection check out how similar the code in Sasser is to a virus we previously wrote. We are laughing quite a bit. And we like to be called Skynet."
Boasting is not uncommon among virus writers.
"Yes, they take credit for it," said Carole Theriault, a security consultant with Sophos, an anti-virus outfit in Europe. Apparently, a sort of gang mentality is building up between virus camps, she explained. "They try to impress one another and outdo one another."
So now we've gone from simple adolescent vandalism to gang behavior (cue "West Side Story" music ... The Jets are going to have their way tonight ...)
Right now the typical profile for a virus writer is a 16 to 24 year-old male. But profiles aren't static.
"I've found in various investigations that it ranges among ages, sexes, religions," said Greg Fowler, of the FBI's Northwest Cyber Crime taskforce.
Indeed, just two months ago Belgium police arrested a 19-year-old female virus writer that went by the handle "Gigabyte."
Well, we aren't seeing a set profile, but we are seeing a transformation. A bratty, destructive child grows into a delinquent. And a delinquent grows into a criminal. Dare I say wiseguy?
"We are already seeing a transformation, where virus writing is getting more sinister and turning toward monetary gain," said Theriault.
It won't be long before this cyber vandalism grows into outright thievery, joining the wave of cyber fraud we are seeing elsewhere. Recognize it and prepare.
Allen Wastler is Managing Editor of CNN/Money and a commentator for CNNfn.
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